Scholars Attack TDVC
[Dr. Bart Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also an outspoken critic of the Bible. He does not believe the Bible to be the inerrant, literally inspired Word of God and writes regularly attacking the Bible. Because of that, Abundant Life wants to be very clear that we do not endorse Ehrman. We would disagree with much of what he teaches and believes. But it is interesting to see what a non—Bible believer says about TDVC. No one can claim his viewpoint is uninformed or biased by faith in Scripture! Deborah Caldwell of the website Belief.net interviewed Ehrman and we think his conclusions are very interesting. Space doesnt permit running the entire interview but here are its key points. — editor]
What did you think of "The Da Vinci Code"? I liked The Da Vinci Code as a work of fiction. But the thing that troubled me is that the fiction is allegedly based on historical fact. Dan Brown begins the book by laying out what he calls historical facts, and he includes the statement that all descriptions of art, architecture, sacred rituals, and documents are factual. The difficulty I had reading through "The Da Vinci Code" with that in mind was that most of the descriptions of ancient documents, in fact, are not factual — theyre part of his fiction. But people reading the book arent equipped to separate the fact from the fiction.
Can you outline the main points of departure between what we know historically and "The Da Vinci Code"? Well, there are big discrepancies and small discrepancies … Some of the big ones: Its not true that before Constantine, Christians understood Jesus to be human but not divine. Thats absolutely false. Most people thought Jesus was divine centuries before Constantine. Second, its not true that Constantine decided which books to include in the New Testament; he had nothing to do with it. And the Council of Nicea didnt have anything to do with which books to include in the New Testament.
In the novel, what does the character Teabing say that is wrong about this historical record? Teabing says that the council was called because Constantine wanted to declare Jesus divine, and thats what the council was about, deciding whether Jesus is divine or not. And that he used the council as a way of deciding which books would be included in the New Testament, and they just included the books that called Jesus divine and excluded all the others. Thats wrong on every point. The books of the New Testament, in fact, dont go out of their way to call Jesus divine; and the books that were excluded from the New Testament do call Jesus divine. So its wrong all around.
Whats another big historical inaccuracy in the novel? There are several gigantic points that have to do with Jesus marriage to Mary Magdalene. Maybe the first thing to say is that its absolutely false that as [the character] Robert Langdon says, it would have been highly unusual for Jesus not to be married because Jewish men were always married. Thats false.
What do you make of the Gospel of Mary? Well, the Gospel of Mary is misportrayed in "The Da Vinci Code." What Dan Brown has his character say is that Jesus entrusted the church to Mary, based on the Gospel of Mary. But in fact, the Gospel of Mary doesnt say that at all. The Gospel of Mary is about Jesus appearing to Mary after the resurrection and giving her a revelation, and theres a debate among the disciples about whether Jesus would actually reveal something this important to a woman.
What do you think of the debate about how important the Gnostic gospels are? I think that the Gospel of Thomas was written about 20 years after John; my opinion on this is the majority opinion; almost everybody who studies Thomas thinks of it as later than John with a few notable exceptions, including Elaine Pagels. Shes the main one, but most people think Thomas was written in the early second century. And Mary was written some time after that. So I think these gospels are highly important for understanding how people were portraying Jesus, but theyre not as useful for establishing what Jesus was really like, as the New Testament Gospels are.
So in a nutshell, whats the fallacy that "The Da Vinci Code" puts forth as it relates to these gospels? There are several fallacies — but in a nutshell, the fallacy is thinking that these gospels give a more historically accurate view of Jesus than the New Testament gospels. Im saying this not out of any religious conviction, but strictly on historical grounds — that statement is not true.
What can we say, then, about the central theme of the book, which is the Holy Grail, the meaning of life, is the yin—yang of men and women. How does that actually relate to Christianity? Does it at all? Thats an accurate description of some early Christian groups, including some groups of Gnostics. And its a valuable point of view that people should consider when theyre thinking theologically — but the difficulty I have with it is that its not the view of Jesus or the earliest Christians. It may be a true view — you know, it may be right — but it simply isnt what Jesus himself thought or what his earliest followers thought. I think what Dan Brown has done is taken the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, and hes fictionalized it by providing it with a fictional—historical foundation.